Landscape and Industry exhibition catalog

This exhibition aims to document our working environment; photographs that show the traces of histories, the remains of old infrastructures and the development of new ones. Local photography club the Happy Snappers have worked with artist Joe Stevens. Together they have been working on an oral history project called “Our Working Lives’. We have been talking to local residents about the jobs they did, how they found work, and the career advice they received. We have been working with Poole Museum on this and it was interesting to see the lack of records in their photography archive on people at work and the places where they worked. They have a lot on the Mayors, official functions and the scenic places, but not so much on the everyday landscape that we travel through; the trading estates; the shops and its commercial panorama.

Joe has a strong interest in landscape photographs that examine the changes made by humankind to the landscape, not just work in progress of alterations and maintenance, but also the layers of history. One of the wonders of photography is its ability to record in such great detail, revealing far more information then could have been observed at the time of exposure. In this “long look” of the photographic gaze, although human figures are as much as possible excluded from his photographs the human presence is conspicuous.

The Happy Snappers are an informal photography group run by and for older people living in Poole. They meet monthly to socialize, support each other to take better photos and to keep fit and healthy by being physically, mentally and socially active. Alongside these new works you can see archival photos from the Ian Andrews and Frank Henson collection and Merc Ltd.

Included in the exhibition is street photographer Paul Russell, who is profiled in Thames & Hudson’s ‘Street Photography Now’ book. His work is also being shown in the ‘London Street Photography 1860-2010′ exhibition at the Museum of London.

You will find this exhibition on the second floor and is open till 10 September.

The exhibition, Our Working Lives, is on at Poole Museum from 10 May to September 2011. You can visit the website www.ourworkinglives.org to hear peoples reminiscences about their working lives in the 1940s and 50s.

Busy editing photos for my upcoming photography exhibition at Poole Lighthouse.

This exhibition aims to document our working environment. I’ve worked with local photography club the Happy Snappers, to explore contemporary landscape photographic practice. The photographs show the traces of histories, the remains of old infrastructures and the development of new ones. Alongside these new works we will be exploring Poole Museums archival record that document Poole’s working landscape; its trading estates; the shops and its commercial panorama. These spaces are ones you simply drive through, that when you pause to recall it, leaves little or no lasting impression; that passes as if in a blur.